Outliers in balance, updating class mechanics.

[Lunateric.3708]

Hello there, as a player I have seen how the Balance team is slowly rolling reworks to specific proffessions that aren't performing the way the playerbase and the designers themselves wish them to perform. Notable examples of this are Deadeye, Mesmer and soon Herald. Many other outliers like Scrapper (Gyros particularly) and Reaper (mostly trait related I believe) haven't been touched but one can make the educated guess you're at least considering working on those. Questions regarding this subject would be:

 

* Are you planning on continuing to roll out reworks and updates to every elite spec/class mechanic that isn't working up to par?

* What's your general process deciding what's a priority?

* How can we as a playerbase give you better feedback towards achieving better balance and more polished class mechanics?

 

That is all for now, this FC has the potential to be very helpful for everyone involved, hope it is.

[Karl McLain.5604]

Thanks for the questions. I'll try to answer what I can:

 

1. We like reworking old, underused, or just stale aspects of the combat system. It tends to breathe life into something that's fallen flat over a period of time, or whose original design just doesn't fit the game we play today. The team usually has a few reworks in-progress and we're trying to keep on pace to have something going out every update. Often times these reworks require things like visual effects, animation, icons, editing (text), so we need to coordinate with other teams and work with them in order to be able to release what we've changed.

 

 

2. Our process for deciding what is priority tends to be a mixture and we check all sorts of different areas. Analytics (per game mode), build sites, benchmarks, and incoming communication from players from all sources are some of the information points we gather. It becomes a little harder deciding what to change, with "what is used the least" being difficult to gauge. In general, a question we ask is: Does this have purpose in the current game (any mode) today? If the answer is "No, and it won't change with just number modifications" then it tends to be higher on the list. That's not to say we choose to rework things based on this assessment alone. Sometimes things don't match up with our vision of how they are expected to be used, sometimes they're too strong and we have limited knobs to turn for the sake of balance. An example of this right now would be Traps for the Thief, where the enemy-activated strike (that we needed to put in so they couldn't perma-stealth kill enemies) fights with the thief's stealth application and ruins the 'ambush' nature of Stealth and Traps together.

 

3. Feedback that's currently provided (here on the forums and other platforms) is pretty useful already. We get information from someone's full-length rework proposal, but also from someone just naturally mentioning a certain skill in their two sentence post. It's helpful to see conversation happening on topics that you hold important and try to understand the logic behind it. Additionally, feedback without personally attacking people always has more impact in the long run. Irenio's got more coming in this post about feedback.

 

-Karl

[Irenio CalmonHuang.2048]

Allos Lunateric,

 

* We are planning to continue plowing ahead with re-works and updates to stuff that feels lackluster.

 

* Priority is based on a multitude of factors including when something was last changed, player feedback, internal feedback, and the sheer time to make a set of changes.

 

* Feedback, oh fun. There are books written on how to give good feedback. The ones I'd personally look for the most are:

1. Be specific about the problem.

ex. "Engineer's Explosives line, on the adept tier, has a dominant trait choice with Glass Cannon overshadowing both of the other options in all builds, even builds where those options should be better, like Grenadier for builds which heavily use grenade kit."

2. Keep it positive. This one is hard because we all care about making/enjoying the best game possible. This doesn't mean you can't say "this thing sucks.", but don't attack people and please refer back to #1. If you can say "This thing sucks because it hits like a wet noodle - I just use otherthing-on-the-same-weapon instead.", that is much more useful.

 

Thanks for asking these questions. :)

[Tails.9372]

> @"Irenio CalmonHuang.2048" said:

> * Priority is based on a multitude of factors including when something was last changed, **player feedback**, internal feedback, and the sheer time to make a set of changes.

Then how come that skills which are already considered bad by the community as a whole get further nerfs which no one even asked for? E.g. the dual pistol weapon skill unload, the weapon set is already outclassed by rifle **in every way** and could use a complete overhaul (because unload is the only weapon skill this set has to offer which isn't overly situtional or redundant (e.g. there is no real need for an auto attack on dual pistol thief because you don't have any cooldown downtimes to brige and unload is alredy fitting the basic "sustainable damage" role)) but this skill was always considerd to be easy to play around for multiple reasons (the main one being it having severe initiative cost issues) and someone thought it was a good idea to make it even worse, why? It's not based on user feedback and it's also not based on in game performance given the overabundance of available counterplay. There also has been no official explanation given for this change which makes it look like a completely random change with no practical purpose (and this is true for many changes in general) besides kicking those who are already in an unfavorable position.

[Lunateric.3708]

Thank you both for taking the time to answer my questions, I hope this is the beginning of a more productive, more fun approach to balance and the game in general.